Roke Manor wins Miniature Radar Altimeter contract.

Roke Manor Research has been awarded a £1.1 million contract by Cobham Aviation Services to integrate its Miniature Radar Altimeter (MRA) Type 1 into the Black Kite Target for the UK Ministry of Defence.

Black Kite is an airborne towed target that replicates a sea-skimming missile for air defence missile and gunnery training on board naval ships. Precise altitude measurements from Roke’s MRA will allow accurate, low-level height positioning down to 25 feet above sea level at 300 knots.

Roke’s MRA is the world’s smallest radar solution for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and aerial targets, freeing up valuable space to maximise payload. It is also extremely lightweight, 1.5 kg lighter than traditional radar altimeters, and is designed to ‘plug and play’ for easy integration into all major UAV platforms.

Roke has also supplied Cobham with the Telemetry Command Avionics (TCA) that allow remote reporting and automatic transmission of data from the towed target back to a central base.

Donald Hardie, Product and Business Development Manager for Roke, said: “Our MRA technology really is unique as not only is it the smallest in the world, the feedback we receive is that it is also extremely accurate and reliable. Add to that the fact that these highly innovative systems are also 35 – 50 percent of the cost of other solutions and you can see why Roke’s MRAs are leading the market in terms of product development and customer take-up.”